As the mainstream interest grows in gaming so does the interest from Hollywood. Don’t panic, it’s not just directors like Uwe Boll desperate to take a rusty hatchet to your favourite memories, sometimes it’s a range of quality actors wanting to lend their talents for large sums of money. Games like Uncharted 2 and Mass Effect proved how much can be gained from quality voice overs and believable characters, although you still need the story and the action to structure them around.

In Black Ops you play as the Sam Worthington voiced Alex Mason, who is being interrogated by robot voiced men in a room filled with monitors and bloody utensils. Mason gets jabbed with some raconteur inducing drugs and as he tells his disjointed story, you play it. It spins and twists through bombastic scenarios from post war Russia, Cuba and the lush Vietnamese jungles. The supporting cast is impressive with Ed Harris, Gary Oldman and eh, Ice Cube, adding their pedigree to the proceedings. Harris in particular is fantastic as Hudson, the bad ass aviator wearing CIA operative; Treyarch’s “Soap” if there ever was one.

The story takes more of a psychological edge with some definite influence from American TV and cinema – I was half expecting Jack “DAMMIT” Bauer to stroll through the game at some points. As the game thundered through its fast paced missions and flashing cut scenes the drama intensified, and so did my interest. The payoff, the twist, was fairly obvious in the end but it was an enjoyable one.

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